When the day came, although she was faint from weeping, she insisted on going down to the ship with him. A fresh wind was coming up from the east. The ruffled sea was covered with long white wings, wings which would carry off her happiness. If she could only keep him with her! But poor human desires have never for a single moment deferred the coming disaster. The ship's sails were set; the three ranks of rowers had taken their places, and fifty ebony arms were about to strike the water. Leaning over the edge of the rampart, which ran along the side of the _Heptastadium_, Cleopatra was repeating softly the tender farewells which her hand waved to Antony. Just as the ship left the quay she cried:
If Antony had been torn at this time by the revengeful passion which inflamed him the day after the Ides of March, or by the hate which possessed him later--too late--and which was to set him, weakened, against an enemy who had grown powerful, he would undoubtedly have gained the mastery of Octavius, and the fate of the world would have been changed. But the time that he had spent at Alexandria had sapped his primitive instincts, and the fighting power that was one of the savage beauties of his nature had lost its freshness. Instead of returning to Italy with the fierce enthusiasm essential to victory, his mind was absorbed in Egyptian magic; his chief idea was to bring about peace as quickly as possible so that he might be free to go back.
Octavius, also, wanted an amicable adjustment of the disturbances which the family Antonius had brought about, but from totally different motives. He was occupied with more serious things. Pompey was in command of several legions who were bound to him through loyalty to the glorious memory of his father. He had taken these to Sardinia and was superintending the piracy of a fleet whose object was to starve out the Latin coasts. If Antony, with the sixteen legions which he had in Macedonia, and the fast fleet which the Rhodians had built for him, were to form an alliance with this new antagonist, Octavius would inevitably be defeated.
It is a truism that fear makes men both cruel and cowardly. In the present instance it caused Octavius to take outrageous reprisals from the vanquished Perugians and made him a lamb in the presence of Antony. He had never been really at ease with his herculean colleague. All that Antony stood for in beauty, pride, and happiness was secret gall and bitterness to him. Though quite as well versed in debauchery, his weakness made him despair of ever attaining the graceful, easy bearing which made Antony so attractive. He felt, too, the indifference of his soldiers toward him, compared with the feeling that his opponent inspired among his men; their devotion was such that they preferred serving under him without pay to being well paid for marching against him. Feeling the scantiness of his ammunition, compared with Antony's abundant resources, he had concluded at the outset that it would be wiser to have Antony for a friend than an enemy, and to-day again he said to himself: "Though it cost me the one hundred million sesterces that he has stolen from the heritage of Cæsar, yet I will make this man my ally."